Canada Mulls Sale of Reactor Maker

Lisa Raitt, the natural resources minister, told a news conference that she hoped the change would allow A.E.C.L., as the company is better known, to “participate fully in the expanding global nuclear market.”

Atomic Energy is an important technology symbol for many Canadians, possibly making its sale politically dangerous for the Conservative government. But it has long been a struggling business venture. It’s a chronic money-loser with the government contributing 1.74 billion Canadian dollars in subsidies during its last fiscal year. A.E.C.L.’s main product is a reactor fueled with natural uranium but moderated with costly heavy water, a technology that proved to be the nuclear industry’s Betamax.

The sale isn’t yet underway. Ms. Raitt named outside advisers who will draft a restructuring and sale plan for the company by the fall.

But the widespread anticipation is that the most likely buyer will be another reactor maker interested in eliminating a competitor at a time when new reactor sales in Canada are likely, as well as picking up A.E.C.L.’s maintenance business. (Some design issues with Atomic Energy’s reactors make that a potentially good business proposition.)

The restructuring experts, however, have been told that the government will keep ownership of Atomic Energy’s research operation, which lies upstream from Ottawa in Chalk River, Ontario. That site, which was first developed as part of World War ll’s Manhattan Project, requires an estimated 7 billion Canadian dollars in clean-up funds.

It’s also home to what is arguably A.E.C.L.’s biggest headache: a reactor that provides 40 to 60 percent of the world’s medical isotopes.

Now 51 years old, that reactor has been plagued with shutdowns which have prompted isotope shortages in the United States and elsewhere.

Earlier this month, the isotope reactor sprang another leak. Atomic Energy said this week that repairing it will take at least three months, though some believe that it may never reopen.

While the government has no plans to sell Chalk River, it does anticipate looking for a private company to operate the troubled facility on its behalf.

Mr. Kanter’s approach to his article and his representation of the facts surrounding the Finnish reactor project displays a notable bias against the nuclear power option when all the facts, and alternatives, are considered. Sure, the Finnish reactor is over budget, as are most projects sold to and bought by government entities, especially the first-of-its-kind in country using a myriad of politically selected subcontractors. Even at that, the Finns rightly consider nuclear power as a viable, and even critical, part of their power generation repertoire. They cannot rely on solar and wind alone (at any price… have you been there in winter?), petrochemicals are limited, expensive and subject to political whims, and they don’t have much access to coal sources, which they’d prefer not to burn anyway. Nuclear is ideal for them. Sure, as with EVERY option, there are costs and issues, but modern reactors are clean and very very safe. Even with a full melt-down of Three Mile Island, the worst Western failure scenario imaginable, people weren’t endangered and the surrounding ecology wasn’t affected, any more than would be the soil around a wind turbine if it falls over and leaks out some hydraulic fluid. The only other options they have for bulk power generation (or WE have for that matter) are based on fossil fuels. Ease up on what is a smart choice, James. We’re all going to be leaning on it (or a pile of coal ash) for many years to come. If your goal is to point out how poorly governments are at managing costs, then I stand down. Hack away.

While able to run on “natural” (unenriched) uranium, it is normal and preferable to run CANDUs (the AECL design) on slightly enriched uranium.

CANDUs have excellent neutron economy and make rapid fuel cycling easy. This means they can take used fuel from other reactors and extract more energy from them, and also makes them useful for other fuel cycles that produce drastically less transuranic waste, ie those with some thorium.

The Chinese just completed a CANDU reactor and its construction went well.

The Betamax analogy is ill-founded, this is a substantially different technology than light water reactors, not just some arbitrary standards issue.

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